Abstract

The following study of the contemporary American author Joan Didion argues that there exists a critical method of viewing her literary canon that emphasizes and explains her works' inherent coherence and consistency. That critical method takes its strength from the principles and exponents of existential philosophy, specifically from the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. This study explores the influence of existentialist principles both thematically and technically throughout Didion's eight major works, and it is the first critical study to propose existentialism as providing a coherent method by which to view the entire canon. ;Chapter One examines Run River , Play It As It Lays , A Book of Common Prayer , and Democracy , Didion's four novels, which graphically display the existential phenomenon of an individual enmeshed in bad faith. Although each female protagonist experiences some trauma which compels her to become aware of her existence in bad faith, she finally chooses to accept responsibility, to live authentically, and to gain self-respect. Chapter Two explores Didion's essay collections, Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album , and uses the existential concept of estrangement to give coherence to Didion's prose portraits of outsiders. In Chapter Three, Camus' and Sartre's comments on the responsibility of the existential artist provide a structure by which to consider Didion's political volumes, Salvador and Miami . The conclusion determines that inherent within each of Didion's works is a fundamental interest in the individual and his responsibilities, an interest shared by and reflected in existential philosophy. Didion's thematic and technical attention to responsibility, then, allows us to classify her among the modern moralists